Okay, now. I know I can be pretty verbose sometimes and need to state my position more clearly.
So what I’ve been trying to say with my allusions to gardening implements in uncomfortable places and all the rest is:
NOT: that we should all put on berets and stop wearing deodorant. (You’ll notice this is the first time in this thread I’ve even alluded to the French,)
BUT, RATHER: Elizabeth Dole has some bad, bad ideas.
AND: I do not want her to become president.
AND: I’d like everyone to write to their congressperson requesting greater government funding be aloted for research into the practical application of gardening utensils as dissuasive tools in the political arena.
Just kidding.
Maybe.
Now I think this thread has become all too cozy and lovey-dovey for the pit. Quick, somebody throw something!
I’m just curious why, if citizens of other, more arts-aware nations don’t respect us, why they are falling all over themselves to come over here and attend our institutions of higher learning and not the institutions in their own countries? Could it be because a degree from an American university, any university, is inherently more valuable to a professional? Maybe, with the possible exception of some British schools.
First- my comment about where I work & the hours referred to the <font size=4> spelling error I committed</font> & was not part of the argument. When I get tired, my eye for detail in my spelling falters. Sue me, swine.
Regarding the " argument " (insert snigger here) that suggests that Europeans are ahead of us ; or more advanced than us; in art- please remember:
1-Art is culturally relative. There is no such thing as 'being ahead in art" because artistic expression is not a race. Our art is good as Europe’s art is as good as Ancient China’s art is as good as the art on a caveman’s walls. Our art ( jazz music, modern dance, Art Deco Streamline, Rock Music) is just fine.You cannot & must not assign values to it.
2- Occasionally , the unwashed among us do burn works of art. This is deplorable, and there is no excuse for it. But in Europe; every 30 or 40 years; a new type of political radicalism springs up. And then; noble, enlightened, Europe --<font size=5>BURNS THE ARTISTS.</font>(cite-Facist Italy, Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, many others)
Remind me again,please, I seem to have forgotten; just** who** was the civilized, noble & artistically inclined society?
Hmmmmmm?
“The truth is uncontrovertible. Panic may resent it; ignorance may deride it; malice may destroy it, but there it is.”-Sir Winston Churchill
dpb, your first point is exactly what I’ve been screaming for the past three days. “We are a young culture, blah, blah, blah.”
The point: We missed the age of the Rennaisance. This I can state for certain. The ‘USA’ simply did not exist at that time. Further, my comparative comments will refer only to Russia, as I (surprise! surprise!) know relatively little of cultural history in (Western) Europe.
blah,blah,blah *
200 years ago, it was possible for artists to make a living because social groups comprised of nobles (salons) supported and patronised said artists. Getting together to hear the artist read from his latest epic and discuss/criticise was ‘hep’ or whatever. Journals began to be published including episodes of prose/poetry/ criticism/illustration. These journals were circulated largely hand to hand and pieces from therein were read aloud (by whoever happened to be literate), among all strata of society.
Thus evolved a ‘customer base’ for the high arts. Many of these classics were considered trash at that time. Novels and poetry were not taken seriously, because they “were not factual and had no moral or educational purpose. . .” (I’ll give you the cit. whenever I get the damn paper back.)
Whether they were trash or not, there was a reading public at the time willing to invest their time in such pulp as ‘War and Peace’ and ‘Crime and Punishment,’ because, as I have stated, it had been the ‘hep’ thing to do amongst the rich folk a few years before.
end blah, blah, blah *
Practicioners of Art need to eat. Critics of Art need to eat. (Otherwise, it will be very difficult for them to continue developing Our National Traditions) The means by which they were fed/ otherwise encouraged at the time when an Art-appreciating public evolved in some other Art-appreciating countries are no longer politically relevant.
So, point 1: “Art is culturally relative.” No duh. I can’t believe you made me regurgitate 2 whole courses worth of Lit History in order to agree which you.
Point 2: One certifiably insane dictator from Georgia does not the artistic taste of a nation make. I don’t think I really need to point out that point 2, debate-wise, is the equivalent of sticking your tongue out and going ‘nyah-nyah-nyah.’
“There is nothing you ought to do, for the simple reason that you know nothing, nothing whatever- make a mental note of that, if you please.”
-V. Nabokov
Europe did not produce “one insane dictator from Georgia” ; Europe has produced a series of maniacs throughout the 19th & 20th centuries. Starting with Napoleon. This is such a pronounced trend, that future historians may regard it as the distinctive trait of this historical era. All of them censored art more than we do, you snotty little ass. Not to mention murdering the artists, which we do not do.
As for your crap about how my remarks support your asinine views–BULLSHIT!
Your responses are a smokescreen for the point that I & others have brought up again & again; & that you have ignored due to your lack of an answer.
Why should Americans support an artistic community with tax money, when that community produces material that exists solely to show the contempt that the artist has for the public? Why finance ego trips in stainless steel & feces?
All your pathetic , elitist garbage cannot conceal the utter pointlessness of funding this trash with money that could be better spent on , say, medical care for the poor or elderly.
Melatonin- I suggest that you get your priorities in order. Art is **decoration. **
<font size=4>Only decoration. Nothing more.</font>
And if government money should be spent on anything, it should be spent on something we **NEED.
Not something frivolous & unnecessary.**
Not art. People die from lack of necessities. Nobody ever died from lack of art.
And don’t blather anything like ‘Oh! Your souls may die from lack of art!’
It’s painfully obvious that today’s artists don’t give a fuck about the public’s soul.
They care about their own egos; their favorite critics; and big checks. The public consists of mere peons. And they show their belief in our peonage by pissing on us at every gallery opening.
If you like this so called ‘art’ so much-pay for it yourself. You sound like enough of a masochist to enjoy that. Or go live in Europe, if thats your idea of Paradise.
Many people do go to Europe to study art , & you sound like you might enjoy it. So beat it. Take your so-called artists with you. Don’t bother to come back.
“The truth is uncontrovertible. Panic may resent it; ignorance may deride it; malice may destroy it, but there it is.”-Sir Winston Churchill
“Further, my comparative comments will refer
only to Russia, as I (surprise! surprise!) know relatively little of cultural history in
(Western) Europe.”
I’m not talking about Europe. Europe hasn’t played the faintest role in any argument I’ve made so far. But, if you had actually read my post, you’d surely have picked up on that.
Nice application of the standard holler ‘Love it or leave it.’ You’re not going to get off that easy. Taste is a personal thing. You don’t really mean than I should exile myself because maybe I like some things that you don’t or vice versa? No, it means I should try to change it.
I’m a taxpayer , and I deserve some say in what becomes of that money ( meager as that amount may be). It goes a lot of places I don’t want it to. It finances a lot of things which, factually, aren’t very important. (see: most of what the Space Program has be engaged in since, say 1990).
I am not going to argue with you as to whether a Society needs to eek out some sort of creative reflection of itself. Bobforbid this country should dwindle to a world of cubicles and vacuum tubes.
“There is nothing you ought to do, for the simple reason that you know nothing, nothing whatever- make a mental note of that, if you please.”
-V. Nabokov
Uh, actually, what we’ve gotten from the space program since 1990, what with Hubble, Chandra, Galileo, the Mars rover, and other orbital observatories, has been some of the most groundbreaking work in astrophysics and planetary physics ever produced. You can argue against the tobacco subsidies or Federal crop insurance or paying corporations to promote their products overseas, but the space program is money well spent.
And you do have a say in how your taxes are spent, presuming that you vote.
“I love God! He’s so deliciously evil!” - Stewie Griffin, Family Guy
I didn’t mean to imply that the space program is sitting around eating up funds and doing nothing. The space program does, however, occupy A LOT of funds, and you can’t eat astrophysics or planetary whatsits. If we’re arguing about tossing some coins to the arts and humanities in lieu of taking care of more pressing needs, like health care, well, ‘Charity begins at (your) home (planet.)’
I’m also not especially happy with the decision to take an aging astronaut into space as a PR stunt clothed in the rhetoric of ‘studying the effects of space on geriatrics,’ when a male specimin is not statistically representative of that population on earth. You can bet that cost a lot more money than implementing an arts and music program in Appalachian School District X.
Thanks for the hint about the voting thing. I’ll definitely check into that. (Here would be a smiley if I could type one without gagging.)
“There is nothing you ought to do, for the simple reason that you know nothing, nothing whatever- make a mental note of that, if you please.”
-V. Nabokov
In FY1998 NASA’s budget was 13.7 billion dollars. Only a portion of this is spent on the ‘space program’, however. For example, about 6 billion is spent on aeronautics (NASA is one of the prime researchers on airfoil design, drag reduction, new engines, avionics technology, etc). 1.4 billion is spent on the “Mission to Planet Earth” program, which does environmental research, maintains weather satellite info, and other stuff.
The human spaceflight program consumes about 5.5 billion, including around 2 billion for the space station.
‘Space Science’, which would include planetary launches, is about 2 billion dollars.
So the total space program budget, at 7.5 billion, makes up about .25% of the federal budget, or about $25 per year per person.
Let’s compare that to some other government programs:
Health and Human Services: 37 billion
Housing and Urban Development: 24.4 billion
Environmental Protection Agency: 7.4 billion
International Assistance: 11.4 billion
Head-Start: 5.3 billion
National Endowments for the Arts/Humanities: 300 million
Community and Regional Development: 10.2 billion
Agriculture: 12 billion
Safe and Drug-Free Schools: 3.7 billion
Dislocated Worker Program: 1.6 billion
NASA is a high-profile agency, so people tend to believe that we spend a significant part of our societal resources on it. But we don’t. The whole interplanetary space program costs us about $5 per person per year. Do you think you get more than 40 cents per month entertainment just from following it?
When the Mars lander was in the news a couple of years ago, NASA’s web site was getting more hits than just about any other site on the web. If they could have charged a micropayment for visits, they probably could have funded the entire Mars program for the year with it.
dhanson, I dig how you’re supporting my side without me having to do any of the legwork.
I am not arguing against the space program. While I most certainly do not get my forty cents worth per month, it doesn’t really bother me that much if somebody else gets eighty cents per month of entertainment out of it.
I am arguing against the silly people who are trying to use the “gross misuse of public funds” line in their argument against the NEA and NEH.
If you were to have arranged your list in scaled, descending order, the funds for the NEA/H would have fallen off the bottom of the screen. It’s really not that much money- maybe equivalent to the gross intake of a couple of Disney movies.
Furthermore, contrary to popular belief, most of that money does not go to artists depicting depicting ‘Mary’ in the medium of elephant dung. Much of it goes to fund education/ training/ research.
“There is nothing you ought to do, for the simple reason that you know nothing, nothing whatever- make a mental note of that, if you please.”
-V. Nabokov
Melatonin: Let me bounce this off you, as you do your arts-oriented version of Contestant #3’s line of crap.
A local newspaper columnist described the Feces/Virgin Mary painting as “an anti-Catholic hate crime, paid for at the public expense”.
Does ‘Art’ justify the expendature of public funds to allow an up-front religious bigot to have a public platform for his hate?
If so, should we ask Catholics; who are the victims of this expression of the artist’s intolerance; to pay his expenses?
If so, should we ask Jews to pay for the spraypaint , used when Nazis put swastikas on the synagoge door? Isn’t that the same thing?
Does burning a cross on a black man’s lawn constitute ‘performance art’? Is it different than the Burning Man festival?
Of course it’s different. Burning Man is not the same as the KKK.
And I know the difference.
But do you?
The Dung Madonna is a hate crime, just like putting a swastika on the synagoge door would be. That is the clear purpose. To show contempt & hatred. A museum shold not showcase bigotry as art. A public museum cannot restrict it’s content, even if the ‘art’ is nothing but hatred. Therefore…
there should not be public funding for the arts, it should be private.
And you STILL haven’t even tried to address my main question. If you can’t come up with a creditable response, perhaps you should cede the victory to me?
And the question is:
<p align=“center”>Why should Americans support an artistic community with tax
money, when that community produces material that exists solely to
show the contempt that the artist has for the public? Why finance
ego trips in stainless steel & feces? </p>
“The truth is uncontrovertible. Panic may resent it; ignorance may deride it; malice may destroy it, but there it is.”-Sir Winston Churchill
“Why should Americans support an artistic community with tax money, when that community produces material that exists solely to show the contempt that the artist has for the public? Why finance ego trips in stainless steel & feces?”
“That community (which) produces material that exists solely to show the contempt that the artist has for the public” comprises of no more than 1 person mentioned thusfar, the Dungmaria guy.
It is interesting how you equate the general public which the Catholic religion, however. They are, after all, the only ones who could possibly have an image of Mary to disparage (?) Do Catholics often step out to get the newspaper in the morning and find burning crosses on their lawns?
“Why finance ego trips in stainless steel & feces?” Obviously I’m not the sort of arts conneusoir (sp) that you are, sir. What I best recognize the names of the National Endowments for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities from are:
The credits from various children’s shows on PBS, and. . .
2)Grants and fellowships in the humanities*.
aint no little chilluns out there starvin just cause some kid working towards his phD in history got a 10,000 dollar scholarship last year.
“There is nothing you ought to do, for the simple reason that you know nothing, nothing whatever- make a mental note of that, if you please.”
-V. Nabokov
The biggest problem with spending on things like the NEA, or the Helium Reserve, or the Wool-and-Mohair subsidy, is not that they are a real drag on the economy. As you pointed out, it’s really chicken feed in absolute economic terms. The problem with these programs is that they make it impossible for the government to find the political will to cut the bigger stuff. When you try and cut the pork in some congresscritter’s district, he can always point to the NEA if he’s a Republican, or the Wool-and-Mohair Subsidy if he’s a Democrat, and say “How dare you cut MY programs while that crazy piece of pork is still on the books?” And he’d actually have a point. At least enough of one to convince the voters.
Melanie–
You’ve made some very valid points. Undortunatly along the way you’ve made some glaringly obtuse statements.
Actually, the memorial was built in 1979 entirely by private donations…most of them from actual vets. It’s maintained by the Vietnam Veterns Memorial Fund…again by private donations…unless you’d like to claim that the land the Government donated was too expensive.
Could it be because “the Classics of…yada yada” suck?..(yes I’ve tried)…The problem with many of these works is that they no longer have a referance in our modern society. Try reading some contemporary authors…you may like them.
I personally like the symphony…and as long as the opera is in english so I don’t have to have a translator, I like those too…never much cared for the ballet…but that’s just me…
As far as a clue about world history, well your ignorance in siteing Rome as a paragon of artist support shows how much you know about world history. Philosophy is debated here regularly…wanna talk about poetry?..bet you could find someplace on the web to join a chat room. And (gasp) betcha there might just be a few Americans in there…
I never had much classes about art as a child…didn’t go to college to learn either…does that mean that as an adult I can’t appreciate them?..Not on your life.
As far as other countries are concerned…well, I agree with manhattan about that. I lived in Italy for 3 years…nobody laughing there. You proclaimed yourself that you "know relatively little of cultural history in (Western) Europe. "…So who the hell is looking down on us? I’ve been to Italian art museums…lots of stuff from a couple hundred years ago…not much of the modernist crap we have here in America…maybe they know what real are is hmmm?
Study harder…'specially that history part.
Sure they do…you just want them to fall all over themselves drooling over our art…how about our technological advancments?..Or any of the Freedoms we have and sometimes take for granted…
Again, go back and study your world history some more…things like this have happened all throughout history…“man’s inhumanity to man” is a catchphrase…
This is just too pathetic for me to comment on…maybe you could discuss world hunger?..Or some of that philosophy you were talking about earlier?..Or poetry?..
You can’t eat a piece or art either…
I’ll grant you that the NEA is important…whether or not it should be increased is another matter. Art can be learned without being taught. And artist can live just fine on their own without getting a leg up from the gov. They’ll just ahve to start painting/sculpting/whatever more piece’s that are popular.
I haven’t lost my mind, I have a tape backup around somewhere.
Atrael, please take note of my Username.
Then, PLEASE, try again.
I really would like to read what you have to say, but I don’t have the time to sort out your post- I’m too busy wasting gov’t money.
“There is nothing you ought to do, for the simple reason that you know nothing, nothing whatever- make a mental note of that, if you please.”
-V. Nabokov
Your response to me was illogical & incoherent. I never mentioned public broadcasting. When I’m talking about the price of beans in Boston, don’t yammer about the temperature of spit in Kansas.
Your remarks to Atreal (sp?) were worse; the snarling, hissing snit of a spoiled little brat. Wipe the snot off your nose & grow up.
It’s obvious , at this point, that you have lost this debate. Having lost , you lack the maturity to lose gracefully.
I declare victory.
Attention C#3!The inside of your musty head is a exercise wheel;
in which two gerbils, Vanity and Credulity by
name, tussle fruitlessly over the walnut that
represents your banal & pointless existance.
Allah on stilts, Daniel. . . easy there. Does this need to go to the pit?
BTW, Atrael:
I have a lot of trouble with this. Because you don’t appreciate them, they “suck?” I very strongly disagree with your assertion that the “classics” have no meaning in modern life.
But then, I’ve read and enjoyed many great classic works of fiction. So maybe it’s just a matter of liking or not liking the work?
-andros-
“Listen Children Eternal Father Eternally One!” Exceptions? None!
-Doc Bronner
Ok, fine…whatever you say…it’s very clear here that you have absolutely no valid points to make, have few; if any, debating skills, lack an understanding of the issue that you’re discussing, and are woefully inept at defending your standpoint. All I can say is Thank God the NEA doesn’t have you as a spokesperson.
andros–
You’re right…I was perhaps a bit strong in my wording there…my apologies. I, also enjoy many of the “classic” tales. With all the other glaring errors, I went overboard with that statement.
I haven’t lost my mind, I have a tape backup around somewhere.